You're NOT Broken

So, here's the thing... if you believe you are broken, it becomes much easier to sell you the "solution." To keep you buying what they are selling, they need to scare you into submission. You have symptoms of changing hormones and "they" (doctors, influencers, the studies, etc) tell you, "If you don't take (fill in the blank here with your drug or supplement of choice), then you will be at a much higher risk of having a heart attack, getting cancer, developing osteoporosis, or even suffering from dementia.

Heaven forbid you have a body that goes through a transition with fluctuating symptoms. This happens during puberty, after giving birth, and you guessed it - during perimenopause and menopause! But for some reason, we are supposed to flood our changing bodies with things that are meant to stop this progress - as if it is something awful, some disease that needs fixing, something that is broken. I am here to say, you are not broken!

Let's dive into it and take a look how we reach the point of thinking we are broken. It goes a little something like this:

You start having hot flashes. Your sleep is interrupted by them.

The next day, you are exhausted. Your patience is low. You snap at your husband or kids.

You eat sugary foods and are more hungry than usual. You are now bloated and uncomfortable.

So, what happens now? Your stress levels rise because you are hot, exhausted, irritable, and uncomfortably bloated. To take the edge off, you reach for that nighttime glass of wine (or in my case, whiskey) to calm your stressed out mind.

Sound familiar? I have been there, too. For years. And when the cycle kept repeating itself, I noticed that the scale was creeping up, my hot flashes were more frequent (actually, pretty debilitating at times -- does being cooked from the inside ring any bells, my friends?), sleep suffered, and the irritation -- off the charts! All I have to say is that I am grateful I have the most loving and patient husband AND that I am an empty nester. I honestly can't even imagine how much harder it would be with a few moody teens in my house. IYKYK!

In the midst of all of these symptoms, probably just like you, I was desperate for relief. I didn't recognize myself at all and honestly, didn't really like myself either. The sucky part about not liking yourself, is that you can't really get away from YOU. So, I bought all of the supplements that promised to fix my hormonal problems. When one didn't work, I turned to another... then another, and another. The amount of money I spent on supplements was insane! Now, did I get a little relief from them? Maybe. But I was still miserable. I felt broken.

Did my lifestyle change much? Nope. I was still using my evening libation to calm my nerves and feel the liquid joy that comes from the numbing effect of alcohol. I was still up all night sweating, then freezing, then sweating - on repeat for about 100 cycles per night. I was still rebound eating the next day. And I was EXHAUSTED... and desperate.

My next attempt at relief? You guessed it -- Bioidentical HRT. The holy grail of menopause fixes. I typically don't take any medication (bioidentical or synthetic) because my body basically has an aversion to anything that others find relief from... ahhh the joys of being blessed with the MTHFR gene mutation! But, so many women found relief, so I went for it! This was sure to be the fix because every other woman on it sang of its praises, and apparently if you don't take HRT for the rest of your life, you are bound to die from a million different things (according to the experts, of course).

Night one on BHRT, I slept through the night! Night two, my hot flashes lessened considerably. And my libido came out of hiding for the first time in ages. Amen! I found the answer and I was never going back. For three whole days, I felt like the old me. Until day four... and oh did day four have some fun with me. I swelled up like the Michellan Man. Nothing like cankles to send my libido back into hiding. After days of waiting for the body swelling to subside, I threw in the towel.

Back to the drawing board. Maybe I just needed to restrict food and work out harder, so off I went for fix attempt #1,473. That was actually catastrophic. My body , being so exhausted, turned on me and I spent two weeks in bed with some mystery illness that gave me a head to toe rash, plus the inability to stand up without my husband's help do to extreme joint pain. I still to this day don't know what it was, but it was a wakeup call, and for that I am extremely grateful.

Pain is usually a great motivator for me, sadly. I wish I could learn lessons without hitting rock bottom, but apparently I was blessed with the gift of extreme resilience and optimism, hence my inability to see the lessons in front of me before I am scraped over the coals. Well, this one had me scouring the internet for answers. And forced me to take a good, hard look at myself in the mirror.

I felt broken. I tried all the things. But if I am being honest, I was looking for a bandaid for my symptoms - something that would take them away without me doing the work. Something that would not make me look at my part in these awful symptoms that had been piling on for years. This wasn't my body betraying me during the "transition." It was that I had betrayed my body long before this time in my life, and it was struggling.

Constant years of extreme stress, ten plus years of birth control when I was in my teens and twenties for endometriosis (that was the standard of care back then for terrible periods), lack of sleep, extreme workouts, putting myself last (which happens frequently when you become a mother), alcohol, and so many other lifestyle choices had set me up for complete and utter chaos. What I found was that my body was depleted going into my menopause years. And that depletion showed up as crazy symptoms.

I decided that for me, focusing on stress reduction, nourishing foods, daily movement, doing things I enjoy, and listening to my body has taken me way further than any external "fix" could tackle. Because I am not broken. Today, I am grateful for my journey, grateful for my symptoms, and although I still look for things to help my symptoms, I try to keep it as simple and natural as possible. And this works for ME. What works for you may be BHRT or something else and that is so wonderful! Because, ultimately, you have to do what feels right to YOU, regardless of what anyone else tells you.

So, I will sign off with this. You are NOT broken. You are entering a beautiful phase of life that you have earned! And those "symptoms" - well, try to look at them as messages from your mind, body, and soul telling you that it is finally time to take care of yourself. It is time to love and be kind to yourself. Because, my beautiful sister of Second Spring, you have definitely earned it.

Stay Fierce!

xoxo,

Shawnee